Leaked documents reveal Reuters helped overthrow Egyptian democracy
Reuters served as a channel for the UK Foreign Office to covertly fund an Egyptian outlet that clamored for the overthrow of the country’s first democratically elected leader, leaked documents show.
This July 3 marks the 10th anniversary of Egyptian army chief General Abdel Fattah Sisi’s violent seizure of power in Cairo. The first democratically elected leader in 5000 years of Egyptian history, Mohamed Morsi, was swept from office, his supporters were massacred by the hundreds, and he ultimately died in prison. With US and UK support, Sisi quickly reversed any tentative democratic gains made during the country’s brief, difficult transition from the rule of longtime Western-backed autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
In the decade since Sisi’s coup, his government has systematically crushed any and all opposition to his rule. Political parties and critical media have been banned en masse, activists, journalists, and civil society actors harassed, disappeared, tortured and jailed, and prisons transformed into hotbeds of systemic sexual violence, and other horrific abuse. It is estimated that half of Egypt’s 120,00 inmate population are currently incarcerated for political reasons, one of the highest rates in the world.
The circumstances of Morsi’s forced ejection from office, and of Egypt’s regression to one of the most repressive countries on Earth under Sisi’s rule, has been well-documented, despite many NGOs and news outlets fleeing the country over the years. Yet, there is a crucial component of the historical record that has not been revealed until now.
Leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone reveal that the media giant Reuters worked closely with the British Foreign Office to drive the fateful events of July 3 2013. What follows is the story of how Cairo’s first democratically elected government in history was undermined, Sisi’s blood-spattered coup whitewashed, and the military entrenched in power, through covert propaganda funded in secret by London.
During the late 1960s, London financed the creation of Reuters’ Middle East service. The outfit provided slanted stories about local and world events for reuse by journalists elsewhere, in English and Arabic – in the precise manner of Aswat Masriya.
“There is reason to believe Reuters are receptive to the idea they would have to give something in return…What [British intelligence] might secure, in effect, is the chance to influence in some measure the whole Reuters output,” a declassified Foreign Office file states. “There is an opportunity here to evolve a relationship [with] Reuters…[British] interests should be well served by the new arrangement.”
Reuters inflates protest numbers at army’s command
In late 2012, Morsi enacted a Constitutional Declaration, under which he temporarily assumed sweeping executive powers, prompting small protests to break out. Aswat Masriya led the charge in condemning the decision, portraying it as a scheme by the president – and by extension the Muslim Brotherhood – to gain total, permanent control over all Egypt’s branches of government.
In reality, the Declaration was scheduled to only last three weeks, and had been enacted due to Cairo’s powerful, heavily politicized judiciary repeatedly attempting to impede Egypt’s democratic transition. By that time, judges had already dismissed the country’s first constitutional assembly and elected parliament once, and threatened to do so again, as the country’s new draft constitution strictly limited military power in politics. But the fear driven by outlets like Aswat Masriya and Western media had incited masses of demonstrators back into the streets.
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